Sunday, 7 March 2010

Another pleasing poll result in the Dutch Progressive Rock Pages poll. We came 7th in the best album category and 5th in the best individual track category with The Underfall Yard.

This is very pleasing news as we are one of the top independent bands outside of the major artists to feature in the best album poll (the major artists I'm talking about include Porcupine Tree, Transatlantic, IQ and Dream Theater. The 'independent' bands ahead of us are Riverside and Gazpacho. And, in fact, we are ahead of both of those in the best track category, only behind the four major artists previously mentioned.)

It's also worth remembering that our album only came out in December. If we'd released it a month or two earlier, I suspect we'd have done even better.

There are a number of other Big Big Train highlights in the poll. David came 6th in the best vocalist. For somebody whose voice is new to most of the prog audience, that is a brilliant and thoroughly well-deserved result. Dave Gregory came 10th in the best guitarist (he would have come 9th but somebody got confused and voted for me rather than Dave. Doh.) And Nick D'Virgilio came 5th in the best drummer category for his performances on The Underfall Yard.

Incidentally, The Underfall Yard is currently third in the best album of 2009 category on Progarchives. Voting for this poll remains open so the position does change from time to time, but we've been in the top 5 for quite some time now.